Language warning.
Documented my journey backing up my Oracle Cloud server. With their latest changes to always free, I don’t think my instance will last very long. This isn’t a tutorial, there are probably many much better ways to do this.
I’ve never had an Oracle Cloud server. However, I do image backups of the server once a month, then test them in a VM, After hearing so much about Borg, I finally pulled the trigger and ran it from the cli for a while. Then I deployed Borg UI, and that’s pretty amazing. I used to use Duplicati, but while Duplicati seems great at making backups, it’s not so keen about doing restores. At least, that’s my experience.
I’ve done similar things with ssh pipe tunneling and dd ala:
, dd if=/dev/sda | ssh user@host “dd of=/some/other/file/or/disk” ,
Should really do it while the root is ro, but in a pinch this will mostly be ok on a quiet machine.
You might be able to run rsync afterwards to spot check if you are paranoid.
If you didn’t need block level I would have suggested just using rsync or rclone.
Way over my head for filthy casual like me, but I get the gist.
I also have OCI instance (it just run wireguard), so what is the proper way of doing this?
Not sure, I would guess paying Oracle for another instance, attaching the target boot drive as a separate one to it and backing it up non-live, and to a better storage provider than NFS over Tailscale.
Or someone also said their custom images thing has a download option. That also needs payment.
I only use this really to get a free public ipv4. (Since not all clients support ipv6 only) Is there any other free/better way to get an ipv4?
nfs over the internet is usually bad idea. Network delays is killer for NFS. You can use ssh instead. And add some mbuff for better results.
I’m completely with you regarding ssh/scp
But I don’t know what you mean with mbuff (guess, memory buffer?)
Haven’t found anything with a quick search, but as I often need ssh/scp to work through customer VPNs, everything that makes that faster or more stable is a very welcomed thing :-)
What changes are they making to always free?
Cut the free SKU in half.
https://terminalbytes.com/oracle-cloud-free-tier-changes-2026/
Yeah that’s a reasonable way to take a backup. I mean I would have recommended an actual backup tool, but dd is perfectly good. Especially since you zeroed as much as you can, since you didn’t have a tool skipping unused blocks.
But the Wi-Fi bit was pretty gross, yeah. Fine to test but never ever for something I actually wanted to use.
